Spencer, Tadeo (Week 6: Xandra Ibarra)

Ashes of Five Feminist of Color Texts is an MFA installation created by Xandra Ibarra in 2020. The installation consists of five book covers mounted upon a wall. The five books displayed in the piece are Borderlands/La Frontera, Black Feminist Thought, Mapping the Margins, Sister Outsider, and The Bridge Called My Back. These books are considered pivotal works in intersectional feminist theory. Each cover depicts part of a funeral urn containing the ashes of the pages from the corresponding book. Beside each cover is a vase filled with flowers that invokes the image of a mausoleum. In this sense, the deceased’s plaque has been replaced by the book cover urn. In place of dates of birth and death, Ibarra includes the library call numbers for each book. On the adjacent wall hangs a picture of a flame flickering in a cave. 

By “cremating” these five renowned texts, Ibarra creates a sense of mourning. Had Ibarra shown the books being consumed by flames, it might have conveyed a message of censorship, but showing their “graves” instead implies something unfortunate occurred and she merely illuminates that tragedy. Ibarra herself says the piece is a commentary on “over-citation” that merely reaffirms false notions of diversity within universities still built around power structures which exclude POC’s. Thus, the flames on the adjacent wall do not correlate with the flames that consumed the books, but rather the dwindling flames of revolution that the authors had hoped to spark with their works. Rather than creating cascade of events that lead to real change, the institution of the university turned them into “poster children” to convince the masses they are already diverse and invalidate criticisms of its power structure. There is, however, still hope. By including the library call numbers for each book, Ibarra leaves readers a trail they can follow. Ultimately, the reclamation of these texts can perhaps rekindle the fire of revolution.

 

While I learned about this piece, I began wondering how much an artist considers the environment in which their art is displayed. Does an artist design the layout of piece like this by looking at the corner of a gallery where they will work, or does the gallery find a spot in which the piece will fit perfectly?